Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) finally got a standalone Marvel movie in Phase 4, which is a great family/spy story for Natasha. But the film isn’t perfect and came at the worst time possible. So if you feel like Marvel still owes you a Black Widow, you might not be the only one.
While we already know what happens in Black Widow and how it fits on the greater MCU timeline, there must have been plenty of pitches for this particular Avenger. It turns out that even She-Hulk creator Jessica Gao pitched a Black Widow movie script to Marvel. But one that Kevin Feige & Co. rejected. Mind you, some spoilers might follow below.
Black Widow should have been the very first MCU adventure of Phase 4. But then the pandemic happened, and WandaVision opened the Multiverse Saga.
Black Widow was still the first Phase 4 film. But it got a day-and-date release, with Marvel making it available online and in theaters on the same day. Unfortunately, this led to a legal battle between Johansson and Disney, with the giant corporation delivering a rather brutal overall response.
The MCU’s only Black Widow movie
Regardless of this PR disaster, the movie itself wasn’t exactly a home run.
Worse, going into Black Widow, you know this is a prequel story for a character who died in the MCU. Whatever it sets up, it’ll take time to materialize. For example, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is the best thing coming out of Black Widow for the future of the MCU.
Similarly, Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) is an exciting addition to the roster of MCU villains/antiheroes, even though the movie underutilized the character.
Also, Black Widow didn’t really give us the Nat-Clint friendship origin story that we’ve been dying to see since the first Avengers movie.
Marvel can certainly bring back any of the dead Avengers, and we’ve already explained how easy it is.
But there’s no indication that we’ll ever see Nat in MCU movies again. That’s an